Members Spotlight: Lexterwayne

Hey guys I’m Kendall Beal, wow that still sounds weird, still getting used to seeing/hearing my NEW last name!! So as most of you know I got married August 4, 2012 to my best friend and he is the best thing that’s happened to me in a really long time. We went to Hawaii for our honeymoon had an amazing time. We can’t wait to go back and take the girls. Also got to meet up with John and Moe while we were there, Moe is adorable and his personality is awesome. Thanks again for your hospitality John!

A little about me: I grew up in a small Central Texas town, San Saba, its about 2,000 people. Living out in the country and on the river we had cows that I tamed, horses, raised rabbits for a while, goats, showed pigs, always had red and blue heelers and barn cats which I turned into house cats haha. I can just hear my dad, Kendall we are not having any more cats in this house since I'm always cleaning the cat box out! 3 months later I sweet talked my dad into bringing in another one, such a daddy’s girl haha. Stayed real busy with basketball, twirling, working and barrel racing which was my passion.

I have had several jobs over the year such as bank teller, waitress, 9-11 dispatcher, I stayed with that for 4 years, and now the last year I work at the district attorneys office. I work under an assistant district attorney and we mainly deal with cps and protective orders.

Jeff and I have been together going on 4 years. Two and a half years ago Jeff had talked about one day owning an English bulldog. I didn’t know anything about the breed, I always had red and blue heelers growing up, so I started looking into them and of course fell in love. Got on the internet and started looking for breeders and I came across one that was here in Abilene. I called and we went to look at them and talk about prices etc. Well of course you all know what happens when you “go look” 2 days later we put down a deposit for my sweet Lex. We picked up lex at 6 weeks old “yes I know that’s way to early, but didn’t know it at the time”. He has been a blast and has turned into a momma's boy, and hardly has anything to do with Jeff, haha. Two summer’s ago we would take Lex and his lab brother Bo to the lake during the summer so they could play and swim in the water. They looked forward to going to the lake every weekend.

I want to say 5 months ago lex was having problems walking; he couldn’t even walk 3 feet without having to sit down and couldn’t walk in a straight line, this was breaking my heart watching my little man like this. I took a video of him walking and took him to the vet. Our vet did x-rays and found out that he has hip dysplasia and 2 torn acl’s. Of course he gave us options with surgery and was gonna let the specialist look at the x-rays, we even had the x-rays sent to Fort Worth for a 3rd opinion, and all of them pretty much said the same thing. They said if they were to do any type of surgery they would want to do his hips first, let them heal, then fix his acl’s tears. They said it would be hard to just fix his acl’s when he doesn’t have the hips to support his weight during recovery, which makes sense. We opted out of surgery and put him on pain meds. I know a lot of people don’t understand why we are doing this, but it’s our decision, we had to make a very hard decision, and of course we just can't afford four, three thousand dollar surgeries. He has had way more good days than bad, which is awesome, he still runs and plays with Libby Lou and Bo. I’m worried about winter time, so I made a pallet on “his couch” with a heating pad so he can stay warm. He loves it and I can barely get him off of it sometimes, of course we have to monitor and make sure he doesn’t get too hot on it.

Through this site we have become great friends with Davidh and his wife Bev. Last January, I believe, I got a message from David asking me to call him. I called and he said that he had a couple of 10 month old pups that need to be adopted, and there is a female named Jessie that would be perfect for ya’ll. So of course Jeff and I discussed getting another bully and David sent pictures to us and we fell in love with our sweet girl Libby Lou.

The first weekend in February (which is Lex’s Birthday) we went to pick her up bringing Lex, still not sure if Lex was happy to be getting a sister for his birthday lol. Libby is one special little girl, and the highlight of our day. She fits in perfect to our little family. Every day when I get home and she hears the gate shut she runs out to greet me with her little butt just a wiggling. For some strange reason she likes to get under things and either sleeps or plays, such a goofy butt.

All 3 of our babies get along well, to well at times and have become inseparable from each other, especially the 2 bullies. Everyday Jeff will take Lex to pick up “sisters” from school, this is Lex's job, and he will not let Jeff over sleep!

I have 2 wonderful step daughters that are 8 and 11, we stay busy with them as the youngest plays softball and the oldest soccer and next year she wants to play volleyball in middle school. Found out about a month ago that the girls mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, so please keep them in your prayers as we all be going through this with her and them. As of now they have handled it well, still not sure if it has completely sunk in and what she will have to go through. Its in stage 3 and has spread through the breast tissue and now has spread to her left lymph node, she has started chemo. Last week she had fever and had to go to the ER since her white blood count wasn’t fighting off the infection, so the girls have been staying a lot more with us.

Some exciting news is we are looking to sell our fixer upper house and purchase a new home to were the only thing we have to fix is a faucet. Haha.

Hope ya’ll enjoyed

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